Back in high school in a shop class we got try our hand at sand casting. We had two choices of objects. Brass knuckles or a Hurst shift knob of the gray wide style with HURST In the center. Times have changed. Anyone do that sort of thing way back when?
We also were able to try our hand at sand casting in our HS metal shop. Our group of car guys decided to cast a car club plaque. My design won, so we cast five . I received the first one which I still have.
Not mine but I do have my FIL’s bench vise project that he made at Tilden Technical High School on Chicago’s south side in 1943. The students did the castings and machining including the Acme screw and serrations on the jaws. Me? I attended a Catholic HS where they never considered anything like the manual arts.
We did aluminum and brass sand castings in my high school shop class. Hurst T handles were made there. 3rd year students could do a couple pours a week. 1977 graduating class LAHS
Yep. BigFoot throttle pedals were a popular choice. Aitkin Highschool (MN), class of 2000, so not ALL that long ago.... Got to do it again a few years later as part of a Manufacturing Technology course during my Mechanical Engineering degree at the University of North Dakota. Senior ME project was a robotic ladeling arm for a local sand cast foundry to complete the circle.
We didn't have anything that cool at my high school. Now that I moved up to Wisconsin I have a neighbor who has a mini machine shop in his side yard and he went to auctions and found the furnaces and all the equiptment and hardware from three different high schools that no longer teach casting because of safety and filled one of his barns. Hopefully one day I'll be trying to do some casting. He's even talking about steel. I'm missing the RH mirror image of this bracket but i found someone to borrow one for a pattern.. Should be interesting.
How cool is that. I've seen some pretty good high school projects, but nothing like casting then machining a vice. Skills we now seem to be losing . Cheers, Harv
We cast the intake manifold for my Flathead powered Tank. My friend Ray Federovizc did the incredible tooling. I'll try to post a picture later. Wayno
We never did casting, but at least we had an electronics course (which led me to my 50 year career). I worked at a university where some dimwit thought that casting was "too dangerous" for the students, so they cancelled the subject (part of mechanical engineering), and I was told to get rid of all the equipment, which I did- to my workshop. I enrolled at a night course at a local tech college and ended up casting some 35/36 windscreen posts as my project. Just about everyone in the class had an old car or bike that they were making something for.
I recall making an ashtray for mom, shaped like the US. We had to hand file the recesses for the cigarette to rest on. We used junk Corvair pistons, rings and all. Those were fished out before the pour. We also sprinkled something on top of the melt to bring up impurities, we skimmed that off. But we got to know what a "drag" and "cope" was, mixing the green sand, getting the moisture just right. My brother made a horse head in his class, polished it up. I have to ask if he still has it.
In my Freshman year, Shop Orientation class, my teacher/friend, Nick Konarchuk, had us sand casting all sorts of stuff. I made a NO CLUB LONE WOLF and ROAD ANGLES Chicago (DADs club) plaque and other weird stuff Nick had laying around. He also taught us the art of melting plexiglass together with lacquer thinner/ paint stripper to make those multi colored dash knows. Those were the days!! Mitch
I remember casting a block of aluminum to machine into a meat tenderizer with a waffle surface. I didn't get involved with casting again until the early '90's and then became deeply involved with miniatures. This is a 1/3 scale dual plane manifold for the engine similar to what is in my avatar. and then recently 1/4 and 1/2 scale Moon pedals.
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